They had enemies seeking them. If this was a private way up, all the better.

  “It’ll get you to the private council landing zone.” The embed patted the outside of the shuttle. “They insisted on sending it down themselves, automated and everything. Smoother ride than the public shuttle. Don’t know who the fuck sent you, but they want you back up there as fast as possible.”

  “Thank you. For everything.” Anselm forced a smile.

  She nodded. “Right. Bon voyage and all that.”

  The woman returned to her vehicle. She likely had a day of work to get back to after she finished this task. She hiked her coat’s lapels to cover her face until she was hidden inside the vehicle again.

  “Best not to keep the council waiting.” Anselm opened the shuttle door and let her in first. “Time for you to save the city of Summerland.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The council maintained shuttles to go up and down as they pleased. He’d never seen them, and they were so expensive that no one privately owned them. Gravitium-powered engines were too rare and hard to maintain for the regular population, including the richer echelons.

  It was good to know the council members could travel without taking public shuttles. Every time they went anywhere, they were mobbed and required a strong guard force to save them from being squished. They were celebrities elected via popularity contests. They said the right things and spouted familiar lines. In return, they received nice houses near the council chambers and staggering salaries they voted to increase every year.

  Nobody paid attention to that. Or if they did, something else immediately came along to outrage them, and no one did anything to stop them from paying themselves more and more.

  It wasn’t any of his business. In his first years as a junior adjudicator, his job had been to monitor their tax returns and report them to the appropriate agency. As such, he’d seen the effects of their daily secret votes. It ticked him off no end.

  Now, the trouble was keeping Summerland in the sky, which trumped petty corruption. After everything was settled, he wanted to make a play at stopping them.

  A small dream, if he was honest. Adjudicators weren’t allowed to have big ones.

  “This is fancy, isn’t it?” Clare dropped into one of the plush leather seats. “Looked like a piece of trash on the outside. Now that we’re in, it’s everything a rich person might want for a fang pussy trip, wouldn’t you say?”

  Anselm scowled at her. “Active camouflage. When it’s up in the sky, cameras on the top transmit to the bottom panels to keep it from being spotted. When it’s on the ground, they change the side panels to make it look like a regular vehicle down here. I thought you’d know about that tech.”

  “Never had to worry about it, but that would be interesting to investigate. Later, though.” She winked and pressed a button on the side of the chair. A small panel dropped from the ceiling. “Oh, would you look at that? Refreshments? Yes, please!”

  He smirked and settled into the pilot’s seat. The embed was right about the automation, though it had manual controls in case someone wanted to take over flying the shuttle on a bright day. Might have someone in the back they wanted to impress. He’d flown in simulators before, so he technically knew how to keep it in the air, but he was glad it was automated. He was behind on his follow-up lessons.

  “What the hell is champ… Cham-pag-nee?”

  She’d ordered almost all the refreshments on the panel, and a few more were being prepared. She’d moved on to drinks.

  “It’s pronounced sham-pain. You have bubbly wine down here, right?” He stood and approached her seat.

  “Champagne?” She tried it a few times like she wanted to taste the word. “Sure. Not very good.”

  “Champagne is a bubbly wine.”

  “Why don’t they call it bubbly wine? What’s with the complicated name?”

  “As I recall, the grapes are grown in a particular part of the world. Or they were. They’re particular about how it can only be called champagne if it’s grown there.”

  “Weird.”

  Anselm shrugged. “I don’t disagree. You’d better strap yourself in. Something this small will jolt when it takes off.”

  She didn’t listen to him as the steaks she’d ordered emerged from the back panel where the food was stored and prepared. People said it wasn’t as good as steak prepared by a professional chef, but he’d tried it both ways and hadn’t noticed any distinguishable difference. He’d been told his palate was unrefined.

  Whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.

  He keyed into the automated traffic messaging from above. Scans ran on the ground to make sure nobody watched them taking off. They didn’t need anyone spotting them on the way up.

  Anselm rolled his eyes and strapped himself in. The software running the autopilot kicked in and ignited the gravitium engines, and the situation was officially out of his hands. It didn’t sound like a ground-based combustion engine. There was only one moving part since the gravitium generated the energy and lift required to take them up. The autopilot simply directed the lift.

  Clare seemed unaffected, although he knew better than to think she wasn’t paying attention to the shuttle’s machinery. He saw her mind working to take everything in and remember it. Likely, her memory allowed her to recreate anything she saw. It was why she was in such high demand.

  “Never had real steak before,” she muttered around a mouthful. “Is this actual cow? I didn’t think they existed anymore.”

  “They have automated farms on the poles that raise, slaughter, and transport beef.” He tilted his head as they began their upward trajectory. There was no jolt. Maybe that only happened on the larger public transports. “People aren’t sure if they raise actual animals or if it’s a DNA farm. Nobody’s been down to the farms in decades. They keep sending the meat up, though.”

  “Well, cow meat is better than what I’ve been eating my whole life.”

  He nodded and inspected the refreshments panel. “Butter-basted with garlic and thyme. Mushroom sauce. That’s a damn good cut, too. Would usually cost me a month’s salary to eat at a place that served this stuff.”

  “They don’t pay adjudicators much, huh?”

  Anselm shook his head. “I told you that, and it’s the truth. We have a wide range of expense accounts we can use while on the job, though. Kind of need them when you’re investigating the high and mighty of Summerland.”

  “High and mighty who don’t bother to pilot their own shuttles, right?”

  “Exactly. Cuts down on human error.”

  “All that pure blood doesn’t do you much good when you can’t be trusted to pilot your ships.”

  “Yeah.” He scowled at her. “Is this how you handle stress or are you always so cheerful?”

  “Little bit of this, little bit of that.” She tapped the steak with the fork she’d been provided. “You should try this. It’ll take the edge off, help you unclench. Maybe then you’ll be able to pry that stick out of your ass.”

  “It’s an officially mandated stick. I’d need a permit to have it removed.”

  “Right. I guess that means I can’t beat you to death with it after you get it out, then?”

  “Sure, but you’d need a permit for that too. Remember to ask for it when you’re negotiating your price for saving Summerland. I’m sure they’ll grant it with a minimal waiting time.”

  She grinned and returned her attention to her food. Anselm thought he was doing an admirable job of keeping her happy and comfortable, considering the change he’d introduced to her life.

  Something was wrong with the shuttle, though. The simulators always indicated a certain height had to be attained before they could adjust the lift to make for thrust. He felt the thrust, but he was sure they hadn’t reached the right height yet.

  “Hold on.”

  She paid him no attention, engaged as she was in the three-course meal with wine pairings she’d ordered for herself. She’d have less than an hour to enjoy it if all went well. He’d seen the menu. She had sea bass set up for the next course. That was a treat he enjoyed, especially with sweet potato curly fries.

  He approached the pilot chair and tagged the trajectory computer. It shimmered and held Summerland as its approach vector.

  “No, that doesn’t look right.” Saying something like that out loud would get him laughed at in the Agency. He’d spent too much time around someone who spoke her mind, though. It would take him a few weeks to break the bad habits.

  The trajectory on the screen told him they were moving vertically, but he’d felt the thrust engines kicking in a hundred meters too early. That meant they didn’t have enough momentum to keep them up in the air. The thrust would force them into a spin, a spiral, and a crash. A bad one.

  He pulled the pilot headset from beside his seat. “Summerland Control, this is Senior Adjudicator Anselm Horst. Be advised I am removing Sky-Car Hotel-Alpha Four-Niner from its automated piloting systems and taking over manual control. Please confirm.”

  A hiss came from the other side, echoing in his ear bead connected to the same system.

  “Summerland Control, this is Senior Adjudicator Anselm Horst. Be advised I am removing Sky-Car Hotel-Alpha Four-Niner from its automated piloting systems and taking over manual control. Please confirm.” His own message repeated back to him in the bead, but a bright red message appeared on the screen. The message was not transmitted.

  Another warning message appeared. All communications are down. That message would cause a massive panic if it was transmitted across all signals, but no such markers showed here. It was restricted to their vehicle.

  “Shit.” He grunted. It was mostly a “for your information” message. He had the authority to override traffic control, especially while holding a high-value asset like Clare. If they wanted to give him shit about taking manual control of the shuttle, he would slap them with an investigation into the software regulations that allowed this.

  He flicked the switch for manual override. He could save them from a tailspin if he switched the engines back to lift. After that, he could push back over to the automated pilot. Then the computer could figure out how to get to their port securely.

  “What’s going on?” Clare had finished her sea bass and now worked on the half-sized bottle of white wine. She’d wisely decided against drinking from a glass since the issues were impacting the ride quality.

  “Sit down and strap in.” Anselm fought to keep his voice calm and steady. A few tests of the gauges told him he didn’t have control of the craft, although the autopilot was supposed to have been disabled.

  “Problems?”

  “Could be.” He firmly pointed at the seat next to him. He wouldn’t lose his asset because she refused to strap herself in over turbulence. “Getting issues from the computer on our trajectory. If we keep moving like this, we’re going to flip over, spin, and hit the ground. I’m trying to take the controls, but…the fucking computer won’t turn them over. Come on!” He banged a hand on the control panel.

  She did as she was told and strapped herself into the co-pilot’s seat. “I’m sure slapping it won’t change anything.”

  “No, but it made me feel better.” He’d never piloted a real shuttle before. The computer was supposed to know what to do, but he felt the lift losing its efficacy in his gut. The thrust came from behind and tilted the shuttle forward. At any moment, the thrust engines would point up and act on their upward momentum. Then they would accelerate downward.

  It would take all his talent to pull them out of the dive.

  When the controls finally shifted to manual, the shuttle thudded, but the automatic fought him for it. As he moved the lift engines forward to adjust for their tilt, the ones behind switched back and yawed them the other way.

  “Shit.”

  “How many times have you piloted one of these?” Clare asked. She was surprisingly calm, all things considered.

  “I’ve never piloted one myself.” He controlled his breathing as he struggled to maneuver the thrusters. It felt like the automatic was challenging him for control of the shuttle, and it wasn’t fighting fair. “I got a license by the skin of my teeth after a hundred hours in the simulator.”

  “You what?”

  “It wasn’t something I thought I’d actually have to do.” He glared at the screen when he noticed he’d lost control of the lift engines. They’d been switched off. “Besides, you’re the mechanic. Shouldn’t you know how to handle something like this?”

  “I can take it apart and put it back together in two days flat, but no. I don’t know how to fucking pilot it.”

  “Can you?” Anselm turned to her. The thrust engines were less than a quarter as powerful as the lift engines, which meant in thirty seconds, they would dive.

  “Can I what?”

  “Take it apart and put it back together?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you find a way in there to switch the automatic off?”

  Clare opened her mouth to respond and tilted her head. She wasn’t sure, and he was asking a lot of her. They were seconds away from true desperation, though. He’d managed to stabilize the shuttle with the front and back thrusters, but he couldn’t turn the lifts back on without losing control of one or both.

  Hell, the automatic could decide they would crash anyway and open up the crash flaps. Assuming a shuttle this small had any. He wasn’t sure.

  He did know they would have been in the middle of a nosedive already if he hadn’t interceded.

  “Okay, I think I can do it.”

  “You think?”

  Clare didn’t bother answering. She pulled a selection of tools from her pockets and dug into the panels. He could have mentioned she was doing thousands of credits’ worth of damage. However, if she didn’t, they’d be looking at millions. Gravitium engines were worth their weight in californium, mostly because of the quarter-gram of gravitium that powered them. A shuttle like this was worth three or four hundred million credits, easy. Assuming there was even a price for them.

  He tried to hail the control tower again and was met with the same error message. Communications and autopilot errors in sync could be a coincidence, but people wanted them dead. Her most of all. Foul play was a possibility. An investigation would take place, but only if they survived. A crash would make the gravitium cells explode and obliterate any evidence of tampering.

  It was tricky, but it also held the possibility of paying out with no consequences for the perpetrator. Meanwhile, all he could do was keep them from spinning as the shuttle lost altitude.

  “Clare!”

  “I’m working on it!”

  She’d gotten out of her seat, and most of her torso had disappeared into the panels. Wires were pulled out and yanked around. He heard her talking to herself while they went down. He’d maintained their level with the thrusters, but they picked up speed on their way to the ground.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” It was harder to keep calm. Cameras on the ground showed them getting closer with every second. Worse, the automatic system tried to control the thrusters while he struggled to fend it off. The lifts were dead, and it would be a minute before they warmed up to make a difference.

  “Okay, I think I got it!” Clare shouted from inside the panels. “Try to switch manual control over to all the engines!”

  He flipped it over, and nothing contested his control of the lifts. They fired up when he told them to, and the numbers indicating how close they were to sea level slowed.

  “Looks like I’ve got control.” He breathed slower, still fighting to keep them from spinning. The thrusters weren’t designed for stabilization. The lifts handled that. He would never have been able to do this in a simulator. He imagined he’d developed increased control over himself and the adrenaline filling his body, allowing him to tap into skills he’d learned years ago. Nothing else would explain it.

  “Okay, so why don’t you tell me what the fuck is going on?” Clare climbed out of the control panels. “I thought these things were supposed to be the safest transports in history!”

  “Probably not. Even if they were, there’s still the chance something can go wrong. Or someone is tampering with shit and trying to kill us.”

  “What?”

  Anselm shouldn’t have told her that. He needed to keep her calm and focused while they were in the air. That was what adjudicators did. Then again, she didn’t seem likely to panic in the face of danger.

  “It’s possible both the automatic systems and the comm links went haywire at the same time, but logic dictates another factor is involved.” Anselm drew a deep breath. “It’s not paranoia if people are out to get you, right? Enough people want you and me dead to make something like this happen.”

  Clare opened her mouth to respond but paused and looked at the engine readouts. “Hold on. Something’s wrong.”

  “I should say so!” Anselm snapped, but he heard what she meant a second after she said it.

  They shouldn’t have been allowed to do this for plenty of reasons. Another problem had presented itself. If someone had sabotaged them, they would have been familiar with the skillset of the people on board. They wouldn’t have allowed something as simple as disengaging the autopilot to end their assassination attempt.

  Thuds echoed across the shuttle’s body, then all the engines died. Navigation, thrusters, lifts, and the electric engines running the onboard computers.

  “Damn it, hold on!” Clare dove back into the panel. “I’d say someone put a kill switch in this baby.”

  He couldn’t do much beyond guiding the panels. He could keep them from flipping over when the crash flaps opened, but they’d picked up speed on their way down. All he’d done was slow them down in reaching terminal velocity four thousand meters above the ground.

  If the engines didn’t come back on, they would drop like a dart, then explode. It would be one hell of a sight.

  “Aha! Gotcha, you naughty little shit.” Clare shouted. “Try turning the engines back on!”